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BLIND GUARDIAN Frontman Offers Update On Orchestral Album

Radio Metal recently conducted an interview with singer Hansi Kürsch of German power metallers BLIND GUARDIAN. An excerpt from the chat follow below.

Radio Metal: Could we have an update on your work on this orchestral album which is expected to be released in 2012?

Hansi: (huge sigh) I would say 2012 is history already! (laughs) That’s how far I can go. We worked on the orchestral stuff as well as on stuff for a regular BLIND GUARDIAN album between our tours and the finalizing of “Memories From A Time To Come”. My goal would be to release either the regular BLIND GUARDIAN album or the orchestral album in 2013. It is doable, but it’s tough work for us. There are so many elements involved in the orchestral album, as well as in the regular album, all the way from songwriting to production… I’m really cautious when it comes to guessing release dates. But as I said, I assume it will be late 2013, possibly in the fall, before another BLIND GUARDIAN album.

Radio Metal: It sounds like you’re kind of exhausted by this orchestral project!

Hansi: I’m not exhausted, but it’s so much work. It’s fun doing it. We did like six songs in a concert hall already, and we recorded them, but I still have to do the vocals. I did a pre-production for these songs already. But we also have to complete the other songs we have done, and it takes a lot of time, in terms of finalizing the scores and all that. If we don’t feel the time is right to work on this, we prefer to work on the regular BLIND GUARDIAN stuff. That’s on the same priority level. Both are too important to rush. We never did that in our whole career, and we certainly won’t start after 25 years, even if we would like to release something next year. It’s not important to be as quick as possible, it’s more important to keep the quality.

Radio Metal: Do you think you’ll promote this orchestral album live, and most importantly, is it possible for you, financially speaking?

Hansi: Financially speaking, I would say it could be beneficial! But the problem is to find the right occasion, the right venue and the right orchestra to do it. You cannot do something like this in a regular concert hall. Depending on the country, the audience at our shows is between 500 and 7,000 or 8,000 people. Finding venues that can accommodate these different audiences would be very, very difficult. What I think would be possible would be a small festival tour with an orchestra, or a very limited number of BLIND GUARDIAN concerts, like four in Europe or so. That’s something we could consider, especially in connection with a regular BLIND GUARDIAN show. This might be an option. But we’ll deal with it when we’re there. Right now it’s more getting all the composition out of the way, then finalizing the various elements. Once this is done, we’ll be a big step further, and then we’ll need to consider how to promote this album and how live situations could be organized.